You Can’t Hack Your Way To Success

“The hacker mindset doesn’t actually see what happens on the other side of pain.”

For a few years now there has been a growing trend called “life-hacking.” The general premise is that you can find a shortcut to almost any problem you have in life.

Honestly, I hate this trend. For everything it promises I disagree with; It encourages shortcuts. It promises a faster route to success. It promotes quick fixes.

If you have followed me long enough, you would know that I advocate the exact opposite. I encourage hard work as a key factor of success. I’m clear that there are times it will become quite difficult. And most importantly there’s no such thing as overnight success.

The real road to success is more like a marathon than a sprint. Unfortunately, for those endorsing life-hack methods they swear that isn’t the case.

The issue that bothers me about this philosophy is that it attempts to remove the stimulus of struggle from the equation. That’s not how the body works and neither does life.

In training, we work hard to create in an environment of struggle. The adaptation of that struggle is literally what makes us stronger. This relationship of effort and adaptation is what forms powerful bodies and iron minds.

This same struggle in life is what elevates our perception of what we think is possible. In moments of pain, we prevail. Where we were once weak we become strong. That’s the plot of every successful person. Their struggle became the catalyst for their success. There were no life-hacks. No shortcuts. No perfectly paved road.

Next time you hear the word “hack,” I want you to run as fast as you can away from the article, conversation, or presentation. Ultimately, these people have never truly tasted success because if they have, they would know that hacking success is impossible and ridiculous.